Cullingworth nestles in Yorkshire's wonderful South Pennines and I have the pleasure and delight to be the village's Conservative Councillor. But these are my views - on politics, food, beer and the stupidity of those who want to tell me what to think or do. And a little on mushrooms.

Thursday, 24 November 2011

...more misleading obesity claims and some outright nonsense from British Heart Foundation

****

Now I don't want to be boring but you can't make the assumption that the typical diet of a teenager will either remain typical throughout their subsequent life or lead to obesity. Yet that is precisely the scare story that the British Heart Foundation are peddling:

Obesity treatment in the UK could become more widespread in the future due to the unhealthy diet of this generation of children.

This is the main conclusion from new research by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which conducted a survey on the eating habits of 2,000 secondary school pupils.

According to the results, the average youngster is consuming one fizzy drink, one chocolate bar, one packet of crisps and one bag of chewy sweets every day.

Data collected as part of the Health Survey for England shows that in 2008 the rate of child obesity in children aged two to ten was 13.9 per cent -the lowest reported figure since 2001 - compared with 15.5 per cent in 2006 and 2007 and 17.3 per cent in 2005.

Despite the government ignoring the anti-obesity lobby's urgent suggestions for traffic light labelling on food and suchlike, the latest figures show that obesity amongst men has fallen to 22% and the female obesity rate has fallen to 24%.

So we have slightly thinner children and slightly thinner parents - it's just the teenagers who are fat!

Yet the senior dietitian from BHF thinks all these children will die younger than their parents - perhaps the most misleading, disingenuous piece of scaremongering going:

"This generation of children may not live longer than their parents due to the implications of their lifestyle on levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease,"

People like this should be held to account for this sort of statement - they have no evidence at all to support the contention as average lifespans continue to rise year on year.

So there has to be a complete reverse in this trend - as well as a reverse in similar declines in childhood deaths, deaths in young adulthood and deaths in middle age. Or else this "dietitian" is simply trying to scare us (and the government) into handing over lots of cash so she and her fellow new Puritans can have a whole career nannying us about what we eat.